Nutritional state reveals complex consequences of risk in a wild predator-prey community.

ABSTRACT: Animal populations are regulated by the combined effects of top-down, bottom-up and abiotic processes. Ecologists have struggled to isolate these mechanisms because their effects on prey behaviour, nutrition, security and fitness are often interrelated. We monitored how forage, non-consumptive effects (NCEs), consumptive predation and climatic conditions influenced the demography and nutritional state of a wild prey population during predator recolonization. Combined measures of nutrition, survival and population growth reveal that predators imposed strong effects on the prey population through interacting non-consumptive and consumptive effects, and forage mechanisms. Predation was directly responsible for adult survival, while declining recruitment was attributed to predation risk-sensit

SUBMITTER: DeWitt PD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5524499 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature